Windows Vista to recover applications from shutdown and crashes

One of Windows Vista's handy features will be the Restart Manager. This feature enables programs to be restored to their last viable state after a user logs off the system, after placing a system on standby, or following a system crash.

In demonstrations which involved running a couple of tricks that could intentionally cause Vista and its applications to crash - using methods whose publicity by means of this session was met with skepticism from at least one attendee - Zipkin and Nallipogu showed how their company was working on methodologies that would make crashes and hangs far less significant events than they are today, mainly by virtue of reducing, if not eliminating, the loss factor. For instance, Nallipogu triggered a process which caused Word 2007 to crash. In response, Restart Manager now not only asks the user if she'd like to continue to wait while Windows does nothing (a rather nagging option in today's Windows XP), but also gives her the alternative of trying to restart the application...without restarting the OS.